Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation

UPDATED REVIEW BELOWOriginal Review, 11/3/14:Since I came upon this book, a week ago, and the "WOOP" technique described within, I have been experimenting with it every day, sometimes more than once. My five star review is based on the power of this idea and how promising it has been so far. Check back in a few months. I will update this review in March, 2015. If I am still using the technique and am still experiencing helpful results, I will write about it here and let the five stars remain. If I am not continuing to use the technique because it has not continued to be personally helpful, I will write about that too (and perhaps lower my star rating.)But, based on the last week, I am very excited. This idea ties together lots of things I've wondered about. It seems to be working, I just want more time to see.Another thought... In my life, I interact with people from many parts of the world. I've always been fascinated with how Americans (like myself) are so relatively optimistic and practice "positive thinking". Other, relatively negative, cultures of the world tend to either admire us, or make fun of us, for our "positive" tendencies. In the past, I wondered about this. My international friends seemed to be on to something, yet they too seemed to be limiting themselves, just in negative ways. I had come to the unhappy conclusion that we were all kind of stuck.Well, now, with this WOOP technique, it kind of brings the value of both sides together, optimism and pessimism, in a powerful way. The best of both worlds.See you in March.UPDATED REVIEW, 3/7/14:For the past four months I have used the technique presented in the book almost every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. It has become a go-to tool for help implementing goals.I am amazed that there are currently only 23 reviews on Amazon for this book. Other new books on rehashed topics have hundreds of reviews in this amount of time. However, I think this is only a symptom of how new and revolutionary the WOOP technique actually is. Most people will not “get it” until enough early adopters have shown the way.For the purposes of this review, I will not describe the technique. You can get a good overview at http://www.woopmylife.org/. Actually, you can get a great start using only resources available at the website. I suggest you do and, if you like it, get the book to learn more. (Alternately, a google search for “mental contrasting” will bring up any number of articles that introduce this technique and book.)When you first try WOOP, you might want to use it for immediate goals so that you have a quick experience of WOOP’s effectiveness.So, what more have I learned from four months of regular practice?What I have found is that the WOOP process channels my negativity into positive action. Often, when doing something challenging, I will feel anxiety. In the past, I would draw upon skills learned in counseling to try, unsuccessfully, to think my way out of these feelings. Other times I tried using relaxation techniques, to help. This often backfired as the repressed feeling bounced back even stronger. The WOOP technique, on the other hand, allows me to prepare a pathway in my mind from negative feelings to positive actions. The energy of of the negative feelings actually fuels the positive actions that I have pre-determined using WOOP. This happens both consciously and unconsciously after using the technique.WOOP worked dramatically and immediately in areas that I have already experienced some success. It increased my productivity and efficiency in these areas. Things became easier and more fun. I have used WOOP for exercise goals, language study, family relationships, to-do items, among other things. I have been "on fire" in these areas since using WOOP regularly.One example of this kind of success using WOOP: I have already been running successfully for more than 5 years. Despite years of success, I still tend to get anxious. Before using WOOP, the anxiety would make me enjoy running less. Nowadays, before and even during a run, I might think through the following:“Wish: I will have a relaxing, meditative, run.Outcome: I will be in "the zone". I will be mindful and relaxed. I will enjoy this run.Obstacles: I may become anxious and worry that I am doing it wrong. I may worry about hurting my knees or whether my heart is healthy.Plan: If I find myself worrying I will remember that I have been running successfully for the last 5 years. I will turn my attention back to my stride and put one foot in front of the other, both literally and metaphorically.”Since using WOOP, I have continued running regularly. I have increased my speed and distance. But, more importantly, I am more relaxed when running and am enjoying it more.Here is a second example in which I used WOOP successfully. I was attending a gathering of several former coworkers, all who were friends, but who I had not seen in many months. Being an introvert, I would have felt at ease with them in very small groups, or one-on-one. But, the large size of the group and the fact that I hadn't seen them in quite awhile was stirring up feelings of anxiety. I used the following WOOP:“Wish: I will have relaxed fun with my friends.Outcome: I will enjoy my time with my friends. I will feel connected with them. We will have a good time together, support each other and laugh frequently.Obstacle: I may feel anxious and self-conscious. I may feel old feelings of fear that people do not like me.Plan: If I find myself feeling anxiety and fear, I will remember that these people are already my friends and that they already like me. They wouldn't have invited me if they didn't. I will just be myself and trust that a good time will result.”It was a good time, and I was sad when it was over.As discussed in the book, WOOP doesn't work for every goal. If you do not actually believe you can succeed with a goal, WOOP may not help.WOOP is more challenging, but also more intriguing when applied to aspirations on that “fault line” between confidence and no confidence.I experienced this several days after first learning WOOP. As I mentioned, I am an introvert, but I tried to use WOOP to help myself enjoy a language exchange group composed mostly of strangers and a few people with whom I only have a superficial acquaintance. In previous meetings, I had felt unable to break into the conversations of extroverts and unable to connect with the group in general. But, this day, on my walk to the meeting, I went through the WOOP process twice. But, once I got there and the group started, I still had a miserable time.However, it was still very important me to use the group to further my Spanish studies. So, before the next meeting, I scaled my expectations way back. I set my “wish” to “just showing up” and “practicing some Spanish” rather than “enjoying” and “connecting”. And, with these more attainable goals, I experienced success! Although I did not enjoy the group as much as the extroverts, I had a more positive experience in general, practiced a lot of Spanish, and I feel that I can continue to benefit from the group in the future.I am looking forward to seeing future developments in the study and practice of WOOP. It will be nice when there are enough people using WOOP that some sense of community forms. I looked to see if any online forums have sprung up and, so far, none have. It would be nice to hear other people's ideas and experiences in using WOOP for complicated, long range goals. It would be good to hear how others incorporate WOOP into different types of professions and activities.

From time to time we all make resolutions, set goals, tell ourselves that we are going to make positive changes in our lives and more often than not, we fail to carry through. People literally spend billions of dollars each year looking for ways to achieve their goals.One message that has been repeated over and over again is to think positively. We have been bombarded with the idea that if we have a positive mental attitude, we can achieve any reasonable goal. Yet most of us know this is not entirely true.Gabriele Oettingen, a research psychologist and author of Rethinking Positive Thinking – Inside the New Science of Motivation, has spent years researching what we need in addition to a positive mental attitude in order to achieve our goals.Her studies lead her to the understanding that two things are necessary to dramatically improve our chances of taking action towards our goals. The first is mental contrasting – holding our goal and the outcomes in our mind and then thinking about the obstacles to achieving our goals. The second step is being intentional – creating a plan – the what, when and how action steps. This generally takes the form of “if ….then” statements – if X happens, then I will Y.I have to say that I am a bit ambivalent about her book. On the one hand, the science is fascinating. The process – what she calls WOOP – Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan is very simple and based on her extensive research, highly effective.However, I found the book a little too long, there was too much detail about her various studies. I think the book would have been more powerful and impactful had she condensed some of the case studies.This approach has been subject to extensive research and has passed peer review, so the science is proven.

A few years back, personal development author and speaker James Arthur Ray literally baked three people to death in Sedona Arizona under a plastic tarp that he called a “sweat lodge.” Ray encouraged his followers to stay in the deadly heat, invoking mind-over-matter through the power of positive thinking.Ray’s homicides are a recent and dramatic example of the harm some forms of positive thinking can do. But Americans, ever the optimists, would like to compartmentalize this kind of event as an extreme case and continue along with our belief in our ever-upward march towards Awesomeness.Ray was featured in the popular “movie-mercial” The Secret as one of the teachers of a supposedly esoteric truth that all famous and successful people know: that fantasizing about one’s desired outcomes will bring them about, either by psychological means through directing attention and increasing motivation, or by magickal causes that change the very fabric of Reality through directed intention.These claims are testable and potentially even falsifiable, thus meeting the basic criteria for a scientific claim according to the late philosopher of science Karl Popper. Do positive fantasies about the future truly increase chances of success?One researcher has championed this line of testing for several decades now, despite her research still being fairly unknown. This wonderful book is the first from Professor Oettingen, but hopefully not the last, written for a popular audience but thankfully without dumbing down the science.In this important book, Oettingen begins with multiple examples from her research showing that positive fantasies - either spontaneously or purposely generated - ultimately backfire by feeling like you’ve already achieved the outcome and thus don’t need to get energized to actually DO anything.Personal development authors, bloggers, and gurus will undoubtedly miss the key points of this important research for two reasons:1. It violates their deeply-held ideology about personal development and change.2. It is subtle and contextual, not easily packaged into a simplistic motto.To point #1: It is well known from previous research that high positive expectations of future success are correlated with actual success. Oettingen’s research also confirms this. But personal development authors have taken this to mean that we can increase our chances of success by visualizing (fantasizing) about future outcomes as if they are already here, or verbally affirming one’s outcome in the present tense. Professor Oettingen’s research shows however that positive expectations (beliefs about the future) are completely different than positive fantasies (free-floating idealized thoughts about the future).Everybody knows that there is a big difference between thinking a thought and believing that it is true. With regards to desired futures, we can think a thought and either evaluate it for how likely we think it is to come true, or we can fail to do that evaluation. Positive expectations involve our belief that things are likely to turn out well, whereas positive fantasies are just fantasies - we don’t necessarily reality-check them to see if they are true or false. Positive fantasies are just things we’d like to have happen, but we may or may not actually believe they are possible. Often times we haven’t even thought about what it would take to put that into action. Books like The Secret actively dissuade people from engaging in that reality-checking or planning process, claiming that to do so will interfere with either the unconscious mechanisms or magickal forces which are conspiring right now to make your wishes into reality. Yet Oettingen’s research is clear - fantasies backfire when pursuing challenging goals by *reducing* motivation to act and overcome obstacles.To point #2: Oettingen is a careful scientist, not an ideologue. She points out already in chapter 2 that there are relevant contexts in which positive fantasies of the future are a useful resource. (As we say in NLP, “every behavior is useful in some context.”) In particular, when facing a situation you can do nothing actively about, fantasizing can help to generate a patient resolve as well as take some of the sting out of the experience of powerlessness. Fantasizing can also help when the outcome only involves noticing something and not actively working on it, for it can help to direct attention, as in the example of a thirsty person in the desert fantasizing about finding water.There are also many contexts in which positive fantasizing backfires horribly. Ultimately Oettingen's mental contrasting approach involves *utilizing* fantasies by indulging in them as the first step, then contrasting them with “what stops you?” In other words, thinking first about a desired outcome, then obstacles that stand in the way, in order to generate energy to navigate those obstacles.Even then, Oettingen’s “WOOP” formula (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) will only help if the outcome is assessed as highly feasible. If the outcome is seen to be unrealistic, contrasting will *decrease* motivation…which itself can be useful for “goal disengagement” - i.e. giving up on hopeless outcomes in order to free up energy for something more realistic. (The one case in which WOOP probably won’t do much either way is when you assess the likelihood of your outcome to be a 50/50 coin flip.)Personally, I read a number of the journal articles Prof Oettingen so generously posted on her page on the NYU Psych department website before this book was in print. It was a difficult task, but I learned a lot and this research significantly impacted my thinking about goal pursuit and personal development. Usually the popular version of the research is so watered down that I can’t in good conscience recommend the popular book, but in this case this book is both readable and doesn’t cut corners in reporting on the science.I highly recommend this important work, and hope that it can make a small dent in making our world a little more wise when it comes to thinking about thinking. Cut through the “woo woo” of New Age garbage like The Secret and The Success Principles and WOOP up a realistic plan for overcoming the inevitable obstacles in the way of your dreams instead. You’ll be glad you did.Note: I read this book on Kindle, and found it to be a very well-formatted Kindle book with a good Table of Contents, footnotes, sidebars and images.

This book needs an editor badly. Its just research study after study over and over. Very heavy. Very dense. Im also not convinced that the WOOP technique would really work. Its very simplistic but explained with incredible complexity. Oh look I just said the same thing again but im a slightly different way. Now imagine if I did this for 8 chapters and you have this book. Also I have read this concept in other books. I would recommend reading a book on Kaizen instead. Pretty much the same concept.

This book is brilliant! I have read so many books on self improvement and wasted my time thinking positive thinking was enough and the rest will follow. Positive thinking alone will not help us. We need to follow a couple of more easy steps and voila, probability of success increases manifold.Negatives :Not a very well articulated book.Difficulty in matching research activity with conclusions for the readerOn the whole the basic message is easy to understand.

very interesting book

Muchos libros hablan de cómo establecer metas y muchos otros hablan de la visión, disciplina y de cómo superar la postergación. En este libro encontrarás cómo lograr lo que propones con una fórmula muy sencilla y práctica. Altamente recomendable.

Je pense que pour ceux qui se poseraient des questions sur la pensée positive (voire le positivisme) et - de mon point de vue - par extension sur le "développement personnel" trouverons sinon des réponses, au moins des pistes.En revanche, il faut comprendre un minimum l'anglais mais ça reste très abordable même avec un niveau scolaire (il n'y a que pour les mots spécifiques/professionnels qu'on doit se tourner vers un dictionnaire).